I’d never been so happy to sit and watch Penny play soccer as I was the other day. The rain from earlier in the afternoon brought with it fresh tropical air and a blue-streaked sky, and it was good to sit back and watch the kids do normal kid things. The league has taken great...
We arrived in good spirits (and making good time) in Central Florida on Friday. The sun was blazing, and the sky, clouds, and grass seem to exist in bumped-up saturation compared with Texas. While I grew up here, and eventually became a young adult, I couldn’t wait to leave home. So much so that when...
As I work on my re-write of my manuscript, a bunch of things are clicking that hadn't before, which is very encouraging for me! I think I have figured out how to hack into my main characters' made-up souls to make them believable and interesting. Of course, one thing is sketching them out on my...
I’ve gotten in a good routine here at my Airbnb without my kids or my dog or my big house to look after, aside from managing some final projects. There is something to be said—a lot to be said— for living a simpler life. While our three-story, 3300 square foot house was beautiful with lots...
I have officially been edged out of my house and have made a little office for myself in the garage. The contractors have made their way from the third floor, all the way to the first floor of my house, working their way down and repainting the entire thing along the way. Eventually, they will...
My College Hunk movers arrived a little over an hour ago. They each appear to be in their early 20s, bright-eyed and jocular in the way of 20-somethings and probably visit the gym 2-3 times per week. It occurs to me that I wouldn’t know a hunk if one smacked me in the face. I...
I watched Abbiee Emmons’ YouTube video about narrative pacing the other day (she has a lot of great writing tips on her channel), in which she explains how the rate at which your brain processes each written word affects the pace of your writing. This is because while reading, your conscious mind takes in each...
Around the playground. Photo credit: Penny My first opportunity to write a book review came when the editor of Task & Purpose emailed me and asked if I wanted to review a fiction anthology titled, The Road Ahead: Stories of the Forever War. At the time, I had already written a few articles for them and...
Visiting with J this week, it occurred to me that it's fun to visit with friends and family around shared interests via apps. It's something different from the usual catching up over the phone, which sometimes feels like a run-down of "this is what I've been doing since the last time we talked," rather than...
Yesterday one of my best friends stationed in Germany messaged me to say she was bombing into Texas for 24 hours on some military-related duty. Unfortunately, it was San Antonio, not Houston, where she would make her Texas pit stop. “It’s not that far!” I had said, “It’s only three hours. I’ll come with Penny....
